


Hair Grows Back

by SoulOfSnow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulOfSnow/pseuds/SoulOfSnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is basically a get well soon present for Bela <3<br/>ASOIAF AU of A Dance With Dragons where the wall is taken by the wildlings, who punish Melisandre for her beliefs. However, what they don't realise is that Melisandre is not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hair Grows Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bela013](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bela013/gifts).



Melisandre AU for Bela – Stannis is treating with the clans of the North, leaving Melisandre alone on the Wall, where the wildlings suddenly rise up against her and Jon Snow and both are imprisoned along with the men of Castle Black in ice cells along the wall.

Melisandre smiled. The walls encapsulating her wept icy tears; forming pools of water around her crimson slippers. When the water dared run too close to her feet, it warmed instantly and bubbled under her toes. After three days forgotten in her cell, the priestess welcomed refreshment. Angling her body just right, she could crouch and cup water in her hands to drink. The safety of such a move lasted mere moment before she began to slip and had to stand up straight again. Her ice cell was ridiculously small, perhaps the smallest of all the occupied cells along the wall, and most likely chosen specifically for her for that reason. The wildlings hated her not simply because she had burned their king, but that she had done so on the orders of a God they did not believe in.

 _The Lord of Light will protect me_ , she thought—over and over until it became a sort of prayer. “For the night is dark and full of terrors,” she whispered “but the fire burns them all away.”

“Silence up there, red witch!” Someone called; a Thenn, she eventually surmised. Melisandre continued her prayers in silence until night fell once more across the Wall. When she opened her eyes they met nothing but blackness and a biting cold that made them sting. The only dim light she could see was that from a fire in the armoury. Below her, the wildlings had ransacked much of the training yard, piling the bodies of dead night’s watch men on top of one another beside the balcony overlooking the snow covered arena. Melisandre could hear them now; drinking and cheering in the common hall with what remained of Castle Black’s ale supplies. _Fools,_ she thought; _thrice damned fools. When the long night falls across Westeros, they’ll need all the resources they can salvage. Ale will be the poison of the exhausted man, when his grasp on life is at an end. They will rue the day they celebrated my misfortune_.

Not far from her cell, Melisandre heard the sound of sadness carried on the wind. Someone was crying; begging for mercy. She wondered who they prayed to; her god of their own. _When men are desperate, they seem to create a faith of their own._ Hope was sparse among those who shared her predicament; those who remained conscious in their cells were calling to death for release. As the night stretched further on, the cold became Melisandre’s only friend, growing heavier around her until it felt almost warm, like that feeling of stepping into a warm room after a walk through a winter morning. Melisandre craned her neck just so, and listened to the pleas of the black brother a few cells away. As the sky blackened, his sobs grew louder until one of the free folk appeared from the Flint Barracks and threw stones at the petrified boy.

“I’ll cut your tongue out, boy!” The man called, dodging pebbles that ricocheted off the Wall and back in his direction. The black brother released one final soft sob before sniffling and retreating in on himself within his cell. Satisfied with his methods of silence, the wildling paced along the length of a few of the cells from below, pausing a moment to peer inside each one and check on its inhabitant. He finally reached Melisandre, and turned to face her.

“Have you pissed yourself yet, red bitch?” He spat, his voice clotted with ale.

Melisandre inclined her head respectfully and smiled. “I ought to have by now,” she purred “I have had much to drink from these melting walls.” Melisandre barely supressed a chuckle as the man stepped back, rubbing his eyes.

“Gods!” He cried, before calling for some of his fellow free folk to join him. A few battled the howling winds to join him in glaring at the priestess, before their eyes grew wide with fright.

“She’s melting the fucking Wall!” One cried, pointing up at the ice surrounding her.

“Witch!” Another shrieked, and ran back into the common hall. Melisandre pushed her red hair from her face and regarded each man who gawped at her curiously. She shifted from one foot to the other, splashing droplets of water from her slippers so that beads ran down from her cell. When she shifted again, the water was inches deep and kissing the lacing of her gown. Looking up, she found he ceiling was further from her reach than it had been, and the surrounding walls were glistening and damp, shining a pastel pink in the light of the ruby at her throat. To the wildlings below her, it must have made for a strange sight; by now Melisandre was probably a good few feet lower than the other prisoners, having melted down through the ice floor. Her cell would appear stretched, as though some great weight had forced the floor downwards. In just a few weeks, she’d be close enough to simply step out of her cell into the yard. Now that she had been discovered though, she doubted she’d have the honour of freeing herself.

When Sigorn, the Magnar of Thenn appeared, the others fell silent. “What is this?” He asked; voice coarse and heavy with beer. His lips turned up in a sort of snarl, like he had tasted something bitter.

“You are a fool, Magnar,” Melisandre called, placing her hands on each wall either side of her. The ice beneath her palms began to shift, and rivulets of water ran thicker down the already weeping cell. “A fool to drink so heartily the only supplies that remains to you, a fool to punish these men instead of putting them to work, and a fool to imprison fire in ice.” Melisandre knew that calling Sigorn a fool in front of these men was the worst she could do from her cell.

“Kill her, Magnar; hang her from the top of the Wall!” A man cried, but the Magnar ignored him.

“On the morrow take the red witch from her ice cell and bring her to me.” In a swirl of black cloak and furs, the Magnar disappeared into the armoury and out of sight. The other free folk lingered a moment.

“When Giantsbane reaches us and joins his men to ours, he will want to know where our loyalties lay,” One man said “make no mistake; I will bend the knee to Tormund before I follow the Magnar and his orders.”

“What are you saying?” Another asked.

The first man shoved the second hard in the chest. “I’m saying I won’t be bringing him the red whore; you do it.” He slipped passed a few other wildlings and disappeared back into the common hall, leaving the second man looking up at Melisandre uneasily.

“The night is dark and full of terrors, young man.” She said softly, before turning from them and closing her eyes.

 

It took three men to bring Melisandre to the yard below her warped ice cell; each one seemed more reluctant than the last to touch her. Her skin was a sort of warmth they were unfamiliar with; free folk had not known a summer that reflected her body heat. Melisandre smiled when at last they released they’re grip form her arms, and five more men circled her like a human shield.

The Magnar stood with the wildling princess beside him, her beauty unmatched by any other woman Melisandre had known, but it was not the royalty of the wildlings that had her searching the unfamiliar faces. The ruby around her neck pulsed when she sensed he was near, and then Rattleshirt broke through the mass that gathered around her to watch with a smile on his lips. _Do not give them reason to question you, king of sorts._

“Here before you stands the red witch; Melisandre,” Magnar announced, and then he signalled for one of his men to shackle her wrists. Melisandre extended her arms with a welcome smile, unafraid of chains. Once she was secured, her circlet of protection dispersed into the crowd and she stood alone. Stealing a glimpse to the right, Melisandre looked up at the wall to see her once fellow prisoners. Jon Snow had occupied the one beside hers; his thick shock of black curls prominent against the pale ice walls surrounding him. “Her sorcery is evident for all to see; this woman does not want to join our cause! She killed our king; Mance Rayder, and now she seeks to run from us to bring her King back from his treating. Stannis Baratheon must not return to the Wall before Tormund Giantsbane has joined our forces, and we have the wife and daughter of this witch’s false king.”

Melisandre shot a glance at Rattleshirt and the ruby at her throat pulsed once more. He smiled secretively in her direction, though not quite at her exactly. Free folk joined in a chorus of profane chants for her demise, but the Magnar silence them. “To kill a servant of the devil would bring ill luck on our men, no; she must be punished.”

“Skin her alive!” One man called, and Melisandre laughed. She’d kill herself before she let them do that.

“Gauge out her eyes!” Another screamed. _I do not need my eyes to see what R’hllor wants me to_.

“Strip her clothes; let us see what’s underneath that dress o’ hers.” Melisandre looked over her left shoulder to identify the speaker, but she was pulled forward by an eager wildling with lust in his eyes. He took a dagger from the belt around his hips and sliced through the soft material, while another discarded her ruby robe. The cold hit her like a hundred thousand arrows, and her pale skin turned a sickly purplish blue. But her lips remained as red as her hair.

“You cannot strip fire; it will always keep it flames.” She purred, smiling up at the Magnar despite her sudden nakedness. Her king had seen her this way half a hundred times, but never before had she felt more alive than under the gaze of strangers. _They’re enjoying this more than they want to_ , she thought.

“This is true, red priest—your flames are very much alive. Douse them.” Sigorn commanded and Melisandre tilted her head.

“You mean to kill me?” She asked, a smile sweeping across her face. Melisandre would welcome death if it meant a curse upon these traitors. But the Magnar only smiled. “On your own head be it, ser.” Melisandre shrugged and prepared herself for the cold steel that would pierce her flesh.

But it did not come. When she opened her eyes and released a heavy breath she did not even know she was holding; her life remained intact. Then came the strong arm that wrapped around her chest, and another two that pulled at her arms. _I am coming to you, R’hllor._ One wildling approached with a blade a sharp as any she had ever seen, and a smile in his eyes that turned her stomach.

“Cut her hair.” Sigorn instructed, and Melisandre’s heart dropped.

“No!” She screamed, wriggling against her captors “Not my hair; you cannot take it!” Melisandre had been blessed with hair as red as blood; a gift of power from her God. No two shades were ever the same, and Melisandre’s was the most sought after of all those who followed in R’hllor and his teachings; the colour of love. Ignoring how unkind fingers found her breasts and squeezed them, and how one of the men retraining her held her thigh dangerously close to her hips, Melisandre resisted against their iron grip. The shackles tore through the skin on her wrists, and her blood dripped into the snow, burning through to the stone beneath. The wildling with the knife disappeared behind her, and then she felt someone bunch her hair in a fist and pull it tight.

“You will be cursed! You will be hexed by the Lord of Light—…” Before Melisandre could utter another word, Magnar commanded one of the free folk drive his fist into her stomach. She doubled over, giving herself to those restraining her. Her eyes filled with tears and she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

It was like peeling damp gloves off your fingers; her hair gave away so easily Melisandre was ashamed at the lack of resistance it gave. At first she only listened to the slices of the blade through the strands, until the blade was passed to another who cut the cropped locks even shorter, allowing those strands of red to fall around her shoulders and down her bare chest. She was pulled upright, causing pain to shoot through her stomach from the punch in her gut, and the wildling with her limp hair hanging from his fist stood before her laughing. Others around her joined in the vile cackles until all but Rattleshirt were almost crying with laughter. She was released and stood alone once again.

“Bring it here,” Sigorn ordered, and the lock of hair was passed to him “who would like some of this fine hair, hmm? Perhaps we could weave a pair of gloves from it?” Laughing, the Magnar rubbed his fingers together, and the hair fell from his hand into the wind; swirling and dancing around them all, taunting the red priestess.

Melisandre dared to run her finger through her short head of hair—it felt as though she were bleeding. _I am a servant of the Lord of Light; I will not cringe for them._ Despite the pain, Melisandre placed her hands on her bare hips and stood tall. “Hair grows back.” She announced, smiling at them.

“But dignity doesn’t.” One of the wildlings cooed, and a few men around him laughed.

“Neither does life.” She said, shooting a look that could kill in his direction. That shut up him. Melisandre laughed suddenly, causing a few of those closest to her to jump. They had not put out the fire in the armoury, and behind the crowd of men on just ahead of her, she could see into the flames. _A sign has been given, R’hllor has spoken_. She looked up and saw the Lord of Light’s plan was beginning to come to fruition.

“She’s gone mad!” A woman exclaimed, pointing a bony finger at the red woman.

Melisandre smiled. “You should have woven my hair into gloves, Magnar.” She announced, and gestured to the sky. Pinkish clouds formed above the looming Wall, circling one another in a twist of many shades of red. Carried along the wind, strands of blood red hair spun in a tornado that seemed to ooze fire from its core. Each strand of Melisandre’s hair seemed to thicken and straighten, and then formed a point as sharp as an arrow head. At the other end, feathers of red sprouted from the sides, giving the arrows balance. Melisandre regarded the crowd, and noticed only Rattleshirt had disappeared from sight. She grinned; _he is smarter than I have given him credit for_. The wildling princess tugged on the cloak of the Magnar.

“Let us retreat inside.” She whispered, though Melisandre could hear her perfectly. The shackles around her wrists loosened, and Melisandre thanked R’hllor with a respectful bow her head. Now freed, she raised the palms of her hands to the sky and chanted in her mother tongue. Val turned and ran for the armoury, and for the most part Melisandre hoped she made it before red arrows rained down on the wildlings around her.

Silence fell as fast as the screams had begun, and Melisandre stood alone, surrounded by fallen free folk. Snow began to fall from the now grey clouds, covering the bloodied ground and frozen bodies.

The red priestess ran a hand through her long, red hair and smiled. “Hair grows back.” She whispered to her new dead friends. 


End file.
